미국 대통령 선거제도의 변화와 쟁점

In this paper I articulate the process of the presidential election of the United States and explore the specific features of its presidential electoral system. The presidential electoral system has changed for more than 200 years and rapidly in recent to find out more democratic processes to collect the voters’ opinions for the nomination of the candidate of a party and to elect a President. The basic scheme of it is the indirect electoral system, in which each state or each party has its own process to select delegates and electoral college. The caucus and primary are the main systems to select the delegate of a party for the National Convention. The primary is the result of the effort to make the nomination process democratic. However, primary and open primary system have been conflicted with the party’s freedom of association, as the Supreme Court held. We can tell that this electoral system is still under development. Despite the “winner-take-all” system of 48 States is considered as an advantageous system to respect both level of the people and the States, it has matters of making a lot of the votes in vain and of distorting the majority’s selection. And the one of the most important issues is the Super PACs which has emerged after ‘Citizen United v. Federal Election Commission’, the decision of the Supreme Court in 2010. The Supreme Court explained the money is speech, which is criticized to result the deregulation of the political money expenditure. But, deregulation of the political money is critical problem only to protect the freedom of political expression of the rich. We expect the following discussion on it in the Congress hereafter. These changes and discussions on the Presidential Electoral System in the U.S. shall help us to make more rational electoral process in Korea. It shows us that the nomination process of a party should move on to the methods more democratic but we should remember the problem colliding with the freedom of a party or association.